McDonald's Sign

Actually, the restaurant baby boomers can't seem to live without dates only from mid-20th century when brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald opened their first drive-in in San Bernardino, California. During the fall of 1952, they began selling franchises for the "McDonald's self-service system," a method of operation started by them four years earlier. The system replaced carhops waiting on cars by having the customers come to a window to order their food.

This neon sign is from the first McDonald's in Topeka (only the second in the entire state of Kansas), opened in 1961 at 3117 South Topeka Boulevard. Operated by Frank and Evelyn Lacy, the business was housed in a red and white tile building. Its original sign featured "Speedee," a mascot predating today's familiar clown, Ronald McDonald.

The sign outside the Lacy's restaurant had a single yellow arch-not yet referred to as the "golden arches"-usually described as a "rainbow shaped arch illuminated in neon." When this sign was first installed at the Lacy restaurant, it proclaimed "One Million Hamburgers Served." The section of the sign reading "Topeka's Family Favorite" was added later. This part of the sign originally proclaimed the price of a hamburger-just 15 cents.

Speedee, the little chef with a round hamburger face striding across the sign, greeted customers at McDonald's all over the U.S. from 1953 to 1962. Although this sign remained at the Topeka restaurant until 1981, Speedee had long before been discarded as the official mascot of the McDonald's Corporation. In 1962 the agency opted for a new look, a pair of golden arches that could also be read as an "M." It's also been suggested that the business wanted to avoid a connection to another advertising character with a similar name-Speedy Alka-Seltzer-associated with indigestion. Speedy Alka-Seltzer was only a year older than the McDonald's Speedee, though, and the two had managed to co-exist for nine years.

The paper hat worn by employees of the Topeka McDonald's around 1965 also shows Speedee (pictured). The character has made a comeback of sorts in recent years, used at McDonald's restaurants decorated in a nostalgic theme.

In the early 1980s Jim and Bonnie Garrett, then the owners of the Topeka Boulevard McDonald's, decided to build a new restaurant at the site. The original sign was replaced and donated to the Kansas Historical Society. Today the top part of the sign-featuring Speedee and the arch-is on display in the main gallery of the Kansas Museum of History.

For more information on McDonald's and the history of its restaurant buildings, see Orange Roofs, Golden Arches: The Architecture of American Chain Restaurants by Philip Langdon, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1986.

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